


Each Heart Touched

by Limesparrow



Category: Cultist Simulator (Video Game)
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, sensation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 14:37:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18950125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Limesparrow/pseuds/Limesparrow
Summary: And for the skin, parted to be drunk.





	Each Heart Touched

Your name is of no consequence, and you are a physician. 

Words whisper at the edge of your mind--they come to you in your dreams and slide out across pages and pages. Your patients are death and dying, and you can't help them. The end result is always the same, here and in the dreams. They go down, down, down, and you stay here.

Perhaps you should rest. Perhaps, after Bennett, you should breathe fresh air and be content in your existence for a while. There are roses to bundle. There are hearts to hold. Surely no one would blame you. Surely you deserve that rest.

You can never sleep, and the journals Bennett left behind slide under the confines of your skin like something long forgotten. He was a difficult patient. Handsy. Too warm. Fingers crept under his shirt while he spoke of things the rest of the world dare not dream. 

The sinuous warmth of muscle and the pulsing under skin. A drum that never ceases and a cup that never empties. The blood of the beautiful caught across his fingertips.

You are a reasonable person.

You, like any reasonable person, quiet your desires so that the Bureau does not find you. It does not hurt you.

But Bennett was rapturous in the end. You can still see him and his crescent smile, all teeth, too many teeth, the arch of his spine from his bed, the uncanny twist of him. You wonder if the room is still warmer than it ought to be. You expect that it is.

Your notes on his case are delirious. It hurts to look at them, draws a moan that can't be pain alone. The want pulls at you, unfurls underneath your skin. You can feel it pushing. Pushing. Pushing. When you sleep, your dreams grow hot. Blistering.

There is an address that you do not remember writing down squirreled away in the pages, and you shouldn't go.

You shouldn't, but you do.

Each step is a thrill. Morland asks nothing of you but your coin, which you provide gladly for the texts she offers.

You devour them as you have never devoured anything in your life. A portion of your wages is soon allocated specifically for her wares. She doesn't know your name, but she memorizes your face, and you look forward to saying your hellos. She gives you something to soothe the wanting, but you always come back hungrier. She knows this. She asks no questions. You don't understand how she can manage to ask no questions, but when you tell her as much her face is wry and flat. There are books piled high in your arms like an unshakeable habit. She has had so many answers in her lifetime, she says, that she would very much like to move on.

It isn't long before you've bought all the books that matter (and some of the books that don't, but you'll forgive yourself that). Morland tells you, quietly, that it's time to move on. She hands you the key and a book that makes little sense. You do not see her again.

The shop is knowledge, even beyond Histories. It's no longer a shop, you suppose. It's unoccupied, you suppose. It's an upgrade from your old flat, you suppose.

The smell of the hospital has never bothered you before, but after the pages of Morland's library, you think you're beginning to hate it.

You meet Neville after he comes looking for a woman shortly gone. He is quiet and jumpy and you take to him instantly. You speak to him of things that most would run from, of the warmth trying to push its way out from under your skin, and he tells you he has a friend that maybe you would like to meet, if that would be okay with you.

His friend's name is Dorothy, and Dorothy is friends with Leo and Clovette, and Leo and Clovette are friends with Cat Caro and Valciane and Renira and Auclair, and--and. 

There is something of a book club, then. You're not sure how it happens.

It's only Neville and his friends, and then it is more. You talk about the Histories, about your theories, about the holes in your knowledge that you only wish you could figure out. The members of your book club listen with rapt attention. They read what you give them. Some of them are willing to discuss, and things can get heated. It's strangely delicious when things get heated.

Renira knows the delicacies you yearn for, but when she tries to share them they aren't quite what you desire. She understands. She understands all too well, and introduces you to Saliba instead. She seems amused. So does he. The three of you are suited to one another in a way that only the thirsty can be. 

He drinks you and you should be less, but you drink him too. It evens out in the end. 

Others you drink don't quite understand the thirst, and you think maybe you hurt them. You try not to hurt them. They're understanding, your book club. They're understanding and they are beautiful. You didn't think you could love so much as what you feel for them, but you overflow with it. You know why Bennett was so handsy now, though you think you're slightly more courteous. You think. You have never laid a finger on someone who hasn't asked, but they do ask. Something about the heat draws them. Something about sticky red flushed under your skin and the way you share it. Your smiles, you begin to be told, are infectious. Insatiable. Inspiring.

Sometimes, say your club, you remind them of the Sister-and-Witch. Other times, the Witch-and-Sister. You respect both, but think you're neither. You're not dual, after all. You don't have another. You have many, and love undivided. (Or, semi-divided. You spend the small hours only with men, after all, but that doesn't mean others are worth less. Hardly.)

After your book club begins to bring exotic texts from distant places, you realize it may be slightly more than what is advertised. You aren't sure what to call it. The Bureau would say you are a cult, dangerous and delusional and disgusting. There's truth in all three things, really. You can't say that the wanting is always desirable, but it is often beautiful. It is mostly beautiful. Even Elridge has his moments. 

So you have a cult. It is a gorgeous thing, brimming with nectar and love. It is a hideous thing, pulsing with veins and heat.

You know what there is to know of the Histories. All of you dabble in the Histories. It is what you started with, and it is fascinating. That you keep returning to the teachings of the Great Mother to attempt to sate the fingers under the surface of your skin is inconsequential until it is not--until you are half-gone with it and your drinking rarely ceases and you are always so very very hungry. You pass through the Door of Eyes so frequently that they know you by name as well as fracture, and your pleasures grow ever more depraved.

Saliba follows you more often than not. Sometimes, still, there is Neville, but you don't want to hurt him. He is less nervous than he was, but you consider him delicate. When he tries to prove that he is not, he is covered in bruises by morning light. He thanks you for it, for that daisy chain around his neck that drips down across his chest, but you know that you've taken too much. You try to kiss him sweetly from then on, and he thanks you for that too. You're afraid you've broken him for a while, until you catch him laughing with Dorothy. You feel better, then.

You don't like to hurt people. You have never liked to hurt people. 

It's only--you grow so thirsty. 

It doesn't hurt, you know. Not in ways that are impossible to reconcile. 

There's a time, though, when you're tacky with the juice of a feast, that you feel tears track down your face. Saliba and Renira don't understand how you can cry even as your skin grows silky, grows thin, twists around the edges. You are so full of them that you're not sure how it can be anything but wonderful, sometimes, but occasionally you remember what you used to be before the Marks. You remember that the transience of drinking is perhaps not what your partners would have wanted had they been in their right mind. You remember Bennett's hands under his own shirt and the desperate gasping of his final days.

You were different, before.

You will be more different still when you are Long.

The love hasn't gone. It's only changed.

**Author's Note:**

> red within and smooth without and smooth without and red within and red within and smooth without


End file.
